Dear Pen Friend,

First of all, can I just say that I’m so excited to have a Pen Pal again! I haven’t had one since I was a kid. I remember my first one, an Australian girl from Sydney named Mandy. I can’t remember how I got the postcard with her name and address on it, but she and I wrote for years. I think I was the one that dropped the ball ultimately….I’ve tried to find her on FaceBook, but nada. It’s ok. What would I say? “Hello! You and I wrote letters when we were young girls. I don’t remember what we talked about exactly, but I do remember the clip-on koalas you sent me. Thanks for those. I still have them. How are you? I’m grieving. And I have been for years. Well, have a good day. Hope to hear from you soon!” Not a great ice breaker after 35 years.

But I’ve run out of ways to avoid talking about it. Grief. I just heard Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor say that each emotion has a physical shelf life. Do you know her? She lives on the web, too. Maybe you’re neighbors? She has a residence somewhere else, too, I imagine, but I don’t know where. I’ve also seen her when she goes to visit Oprah on the TV. Anyway, look her up. She’s an awesome teacher. She was talking about how American society has branded the proper response to the question, “How are you?” Do people answer it honestly where you are? Where I am people use the correct American answer, “Fine”. I’ve abandoned it recently. It’s interesting to see people’s reaction when my answer is, “It’s not my best day.” or “My heart feels heavy and tired.” I’ve gotten the spectrum of reactions from “Oh” – and exit, to “Thank you for your honesty – most people lie and say ‘fine’. Hang in there. This too shall pass. Want a hug?”

I don’t get angry at the people who skitter away muttering ‘oh’. I get it. We all have enough of our own emotional stuff that taking on another person’s is too much for some. I’m not asking people to take it on, though. It’s just the only way I’ve found to say, “Be gentle with me. I’m delicate right now and I’d like to avoid becoming fragile, so I’m talking about it.” Anyway, back to Dr. Jill and emotion in the body.

For instance, anger is felt in the body for 90 seconds. In that time, the body stops making that mix of hormones that accompany anger, and then they burn off and go away. The point being, if a person can wait out the 90 seconds – and then not tell themselves the story again, which reignites the whole cycle unfortunately – then anger just goes away. It’s felt, it’s noticed, and it’s released. I wonder how long grief stays in the body. Some Societies used to allow people a year of mourning – a space where grief could be processed and released. So, maybe it takes a year to feel it, process it, and let it all go. I haven’t been given any time – ever – to have space for my grief to run its course. So, I’ve told myself it doesn’t really exist. But my body is telling me otherwise. It’s showing me where I’ve stored it, and it’s getting weary of the burden of a heavy load. So, with your help, Dear Pen Friend, I’m going to look at what I’ve lost, mourn it, feel it, hopefully “find the funny” somewhere inside of it, and let it go. It’s time.

Now that I think about Mandy, I’m struck by the fact that I never grieved losing her frequent letters in my life. She was one of my closest childhood friends – even though she was a continent away and I’d never met nor spoken to her. We just wrote letters. I had a lot of things in my life I couldn’t really talk about with people, but written in a letter, they didn’t seem so horrible to express. I could keep my handwriting very even and gentle, softening the impact of the story. And, whenever it was probably “too much”, she chose to write me back, anyway, but didn’t address the darkness. Mandy simply held my stories, and I held hers, although hers were always very sweet and gentle. Mine kept getting gorier, and I think that’s why I stopped writing. Our worlds were quickly becoming more than just continents apart.

But I missed her bright, cheery pages to me. I still have a few of her letters, I think, in a shoebox beneath my childhood bed. I went to Sydney a few years ago on a mini-pilgrimage and found the road she grew up on. (I felt a little stalker-ish.) I couldn’t remember the house number, though, and it’s a long road, so I have no idea where her house was. Ironically, the road is also my last name by marriage. Do you find that funny? I do. I’m not sure why. It just strikes me as amusing. I loved Sydney, btw. Have you ever been? I need to go back. I wasn’t there long enough. Maybe next time I’ll have Mandy’s house number and I’ll go and see where she was living when she was writing to me. I’d just like to have the visual to match the little girl with reddish-brown pigtails adorned with yellow ribbons, bright blue, sparkling eyes, and an awesome green and white plaid jumper. She was so cute.

Where do you live? I don’t know exactly where “The Web” exists on the globe. (I never actually had a geography class in school. The education system is puzzling.) I was taught many years ago that it’s a series of tubes, but that seems to have been an ignorant comment, and at any rate nobody said where those tubes lived. So, can you describe what it’s like where you are? I’m in New York City….I keep trying to make it there…..and I don’t want to go anywhere else right now….

The City, as I call it, is a relentless beast, but I love it. As a little girl, all I wanted to do was to come here and “make it” on Broadway. My beautiful mother supported me all the way, and here I am. Am I “making it”? We’ll talk about that later. But I’m grateful that I had a mom that never said, “You won’t succeed in making your dreams come true.” She just didn’t. As an adult I see how special that was.

It’s her birthday today, btw. As a kid I always thought it was fun to have St. Patrick’s Day as a birthday. And then I moved to Boston for my undergraduate studies. That town becomes a gaggle of drunken idiots by 10 a.m., most of them college-aged boys who leave their stomach contents spewed across snowbanks, curbs, and fronts of buildings. By lunchtime The City isn’t markedly better in the Times Square area, where I frequently need to traverse. So, now, if possible, I stay at home and celebrate my mother, and think about how lucky I am to have her within the confines of my quiet and usually vomit-free home. I don’t know much about St. Patrick, but I do know my mother should be canonized. She’s performed miracles in my life for decades.

Oh, before I forget, thank you for being here for me. I need to give words to the grief I’ve been carrying for far too long. Don’t worry. I’ve figured out how to make some of it funny. I just need someone who gets the joke. I’m hoping you will. And I look forward to hearing about your grief, too. I see us making little paper sailboats together with words like “death,” “loss,” “betrayal,” “abandonment,” “alteration,” etc. written on them, and setting them free into the ocean to let the mighty waves wash them away. I’m ready to look at my grief – all of it – and see if I can’t stop carrying it with me every day. It’s getting too heavy for me. Is yours? I’ll help you create your sailing fleet if you’ll help me with mine!

I hope you have a beautiful day, dear Pen Friend. Know that I am sending you sunshine and glitter, and I look forward to writing to you again….and hearing from you when you have time/something to share. Oh, and cry when you need to. Just try not to do it in front of people. Their reaction is usually to tell you to “stop” in some way, which is – let’s face it – for their comfort, not yours. If they were really interested in helping those of us public criers to mute our mewling, they’d give us a calm, quiet place to reset, and a cup of tea with a side of sympathy. More on that another day.

Anyway, I’m so excited. Thank you. I needed you right now, and here you are.

Later,
Me

P.S. Do you like music? (It’s like air for me.) Do you like salad? (It’s my favorite happy food, but if I’m sad, then I need mac and cheese.) What’s your favorite color? (I go between bright yellow, hot pink, and robin’s egg blue.)